Once in a while you come across something that completely changes your life. This happened to me late last year.
While scrolling through Steve Pavlina’s site, I came across his concept of the 30 Day Habit Experiment. His idea is to “test drive” a specific habit for 30 days. Then at the end of this period you make a decision to keep it or not.
As you probably know it’s a challenge to develop (or change) a habit. But if you introduce this concept into your personal growth, it becomes much easier to develop successful habits.
Here’s why…
Why Developing Habits is Really Hard
We all want to live better lives.
Lose weight. Quit smoking. Make more friends. Get that promotion. Find that special someone.
These are all goals people make for themselves.
But often they fail because it’s hard to make a permanent change to their behavior.
Why is that?
Because ‘forever’ seems like, well…forever. If you wanted to quit smoking, it’s really hard to say you’ll never have another cigarette.
But with the 30 Day Success Habit Experiment, you don’t talk about forever.
Instead you make the promise to develop (or change) a habit for only a month. That’s it. After the month is over, you evaluate this habit and decided if it worked for you.
Measuring the Results of the Habit Change
After implementing Steve’s idea of a 30 day habit for a few months, I’ve experience a dramatic growth in many areas of my life.
The one thing I would add to this process is HOW you go about evaluating the results of the habit you’re trying to create or eliminate. I recommend making a decision based on what I call the C.E.E.P. formula (I’m not very good with acronyms.)
Continue- Do you need another 30 or 60 days to continue evaluating this habit?
Eliminate-Was the habit a failure? If so, it’s time to eliminate it.
Evolve– Could you take the habit one step further? Maybe it should evolve into another habit that stretches your comfort zone.
Permanent-Was the habit a success? If so, keep it on a permanent basis.
It’s always important to make some sort of determination at the end of the 30 days…Even if you hated it the entire time.
Introducing the ‘30 Day Success Habit Series’
Like I said, in the last couple of months I’ve grown a lot from implementing this concept. So I’ve decided to dedicate each month to developing (or eliminating) 1 to 3 habits. This is something I’m going to call the 30 Day Success Habits Series (30DSHS).
In this monthly column, I’m going to talk about the habit I’m developing. If the habit is a success I’ll write about it. If the habit is a failure I’ll write about that as well.
Maybe my experiences will teach you something. Perhaps you’ll get the inspiration to join me and develop your own 30 day success habits.
To kick off this series, tomorrow I’ll be posting what I’ve been doing for the month of January. It’s a simple exercise. But it’s one that’s really helped increase my communication skills.
Take Action. Get Results.